The Darkness that Keeps You Up at Night
by SeaSpectre160
Summary: Everyone on the Waverider has experienced horrors that invade their dreams at night. Third in 'Long Way Home'.
1. 206 Times

**I'm baaaack! And now fully qualified for Teaching English as a Second Language.**

 **This story was a bit harder to write since it doesn't completely focus on Len and Sara, who I've found I'm a bit better at writing. The basic plan for this is that each chapter will focus on a different member of the team and their nightmare, and I will be updating this every week just like I did with 'Dear Lisa'.**

 **DISCLAIMER: I don't own Legends of Tomorrow.**

 **WORD COUNT: 1616**

* * *

"Remember that all through history there have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they seemed invincible. But in the end, they always fall. Always." – Mahatma Gandhi

* * *

 _Tuesday, February 16th, 572_

 _"_ _Brian!" Celia screams in a panic, running faster than her noble upbringing would otherwise permit, "Brian, he's here!"_

 _Brian Kent looks up from brushing his horse, understanding right away who she means. It was only a matter of time before Hath-Set, whom they know to follow the power, would recognise the most beautiful daughter of the Penbrook family and come looking. He's about to throw the saddle on, but decides that it will take too much time. He knows he can ride bareback on this particular mount, so he picks up his travel bag of food and the barest amount of supplies and slings it over his shoulder. When Celia reaches him, he helps her climb up before joining her and urging the horse out the stable door._

 _"_ _He's coming from the West," Celia tells him, and since Brian knows better than to doubt her instincts and senses, he immediately turns his horse to the East. She clings to him as they ride away through the woods, branches tearing at their faces and clothing. They are going to pick up his Silent Knight armour from where he has hidden it in the woods, and then run like this for as long as the horse can hold out before taking to the air._

 _Suddenly, the horse whinnies loudly in pain and starts jumping around. Both Brian and Celia are thrown from its back and land hard on the ground. Celia yelps and lifts her arm, bloody where a metal caltrop has pierced it. The forest erupts with movement around them as no less than six armed men emerge from the brush. Brian scrambles to his feet and pulls a knife out of his belt, lunging at the closest of their attackers._

 _He ducks under the other man's sword and drives the blade into his belly before dragging it sideways, effectively disemboweling him like he learned in his various past lives. Then he dodges to the side to avoid another sword coming down on him._

 _Brian is lost in the dangerous dance of blades as he fights for his life, until he hears the shrill scream behind him. He turns, but it's too late. Hath-Set, or Savage, as he now calls himself, has drawn his dagger across Celia's throat. Feathers from her wings are still fluttering to the ground. Bloody feathers. "CELIA!" he yells._

 _Savage sets her down almost gently, a mournful expression on his face. "I wish it didn't have to be this way, Chay-Ara."_

 _"_ _Then why won't you LEAVE US ALONE?!" Brian demands, charging forward. One hundred and thirty-five times. This monster has killed them_ _ **one hundred and thirty-five times**_ _. One hundred and thirty-five lifetimes of rage fill him, his wings flaring out behind him, as he tries to come out on the winning side_ _ **for once**_ _._

 _Pain suddenly lances through his back as an arrow pierces it from behind. He didn't kill all of Savage's men before attempting to attack their leader. Savage's knife soon lodges itself in his stomach._

 _Their tormentor is grinning at him. "You think you love her? Then why can't you protect her?"_

* * *

 _Friday, January 22_ _nd_ _, 2016, 5:30am_

"Celia!" The name burst unbidden through his lips as Brian surged up from sleep. No, not Brian. Carter. He was Carter now. The moments after waking were always filled with confusion, trying to remember whether he was James, Hannibal, John, Koenraad, Brian, Khufu… he'd had so many names over the past four thousand years. And the names he screamed upon waking were always different: Sheila, Kate, Charlotte, Kasimira, Celia, Chay-Ara…

Kendra. This wasn't the first time she'd had the same name as one of her past incarnations; it's something that can happen when you've lived over two hundred lives. She was Kendra in the 1940s, and now she was Kendra again. Just thinking of the name brought memories of her disappointment when he forgot their anniversary. They hadn't been married since they were James and Sheila (or rather, Joe and Edith).

But Kendra – this Kendra – wasn't married to him. She wasn't even his girlfriend; they'd just met in this life, and like many times before, her memories of their past, of their relationship, were coming back more slowly than his. She had her own room in Carter's apartment (she was adamant that it was _his_ apartment, not _their_ apartment), so she wasn't even lying next to him.

Carter slid out of his bed and padded to the kitchen, figuring the cliché glass of warm milk might do him some good. He paused in the doorway when he saw that the kitchen light was already on, Kendra's form silhouetted against the island. She turned around upon hearing him entering. "Can't sleep, either?" she asked over her mug of hot chocolate, "It _was_ a weird night."

Weird was a good way to describe it. They'd been practicing their flying when they'd spotted a woman trapped in her car on a set of train tracks. They'd freed her and tried to fly off with her in between them, but Kendra had still been inexperienced with flying, and had slowed them down; Carter had had to pull her out of the way of the train, and once the danger had passed, he'd insisted on carrying the woman himself. Then, while they were arguing about it, some strange British man had appeared, made a comment about couples counseling, and knocked them out with a strange flashing device.

But it was what had happened afterwards that had Carter thinking. After they woke up with six strangers on a Star City rooftop, the British man had introduced himself as Rip Hunter From East London And The Future, and had explained how Vandal Savage, Carter and Kendra's immortal stalker, was not completely destroyed last month since they weren't the ones to deal the final blow, and would take over the world in 150 years. Hunter was amassing a team to stop him.

Carter had spent his four thousand years running _away_ from Vandal Savage. Trying to have some sort of life with his soulmate until it all came to its inevitable end. The thought of actually seeking him out was… terrifying.

But it had almost always been the two of them. Occasionally they'd had friends and allies helping them evade and fight Savage, but most of the time they'd been on their own. Carter had learned a bit about the other people Hunter had recruited before they'd all scattered: Sara Lance, Laurel Lance's ex-assassin of a younger sister; Ray Palmer, another friend of Team Arrow and a certified genius; Professor Martin Stein and Jefferson 'Jax' Jackson, the two-in-one metahuman friends of the Flash. He didn't really care for the two criminals, Leonard Snart and Mick Rory, and wondered why Hunter thought even trying to recruit them was a good idea. It wasn't likely that they'd sign on for this, considering they'd been the first ones to walk away, with no indication that they might consider changing their minds.

But the others… Palmer had made his decision to join before leaving the rooftop, as had Stein. If Lance chose to go, and if Stein changed his young partner's mind, then they would have a fairly capable, competent team. Adding Hunter and his future technology into the mix made Carter start to believe that maybe they could win a confrontation against Savage. Having a team had already proven to work before. That maybe it could stop at two hundred and six.

A scratching noise brought him back to reality and made him realise that he hadn't responded to Kendra's comment, probably for several seconds. She was frowning at him with concern, now, pushing her stool back as she stood up. Carter blinked. "Uh, yeah, weird."

Kendra frowned. "What, have you seen… have we seen anything weirder? In our past lives?"

"Nothing involving time-travel." Suddenly he felt exhausted, and glanced at the clock. Five-thirty in the morning probably wasn't the best time to discuss this, not when they had taken the train all the way back to St. Roch from Star City, because Hunter apparently couldn't be bothered to provide them with a way back to the various locations he'd taken them from. Thankfully Dr. Palmer ("Call me Ray") had been gracious enough to pay for train tickets and provide bags with which to carry their armour. And thankfully both Kendra and Carter had been wearing some normal clothes under the armour, though Ray seemed like he would've offered to buy them whole new outfits if they needed them.

Kendra stretched, draining the last of her hot chocolate and depositing the mug in the sink. "Well, let's see if that worked. Goodnight."

Carter watched her shuffle back to her room, filled with a desire to finally be rid of the looming fear of Vandal Savage that constantly threatened to end their brief happiness. He made his own decision right there: he would join Rip Hunter's team. He would work with these heroes to put an end to this vicious cycle he and his soulmate had been subjected to for four thousand years.

Now, to convince her that that was the best choice for them.

* * *

 **It is my belief that Joe and Edith Boardman are really James and Sheila Wright, two previous incarnations of Khufu and Chay-Ara from the comics, since we already know that their identities as the 'Boardmans' were just the latest of a string of aliases. Brian Kent and Celia Penbrook were also previous incarnations, but I only know what I've read from the DC Wiki, which is very little, so I'm just taking bits and pieces of that.**

 **Also: How did everyone get home after Rip kidnapped them? The locations of Star City and Central City are a bit sketchy in Arrowverse; all I know is that they're 600 miles apart and I figure they must be in the same state if they send their criminals to the same prison. My best guess is they're both in California, but St. Roch is in Louisiana, and Pittsburgh is even further away. Granted, Stein and Jax seem to have returned to Central after the rooftop speech, but that's still several hours away. I don't know how fast a train ride from Star City to St. Roch would be, but I've decided to not care too much.**


	2. I Love You, My Darling

**Hello, and welcome to another chapter of 'The Darkness that Keeps You Up at Night'.**

 **For those of you who don't know, I've been nominated for the 2016 Captain Canary Awards on Tumblr in three categories: 'Best Short One-Shot' (for 'How Far Would You Go?'), 'Best Canon-Compliant Fiction' (for 'Dear Lisa') and 'Best Leonard Author'. Voting lasts until 11:59 on October 10th (CDT). So you have until Monday if you want to vote! And you can vote more than once, just in 24 hour intervals.**

 **DISCLAIMER: I don't own Legends of Tomorrow.**

 **WORD COUNT: 1551**

* * *

"Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of overcoming it." – Helen Keller

* * *

 _Thursday, November 12th, 1925_

 _"_ _Good night, Mommy."_

 _Edith Boardman, formerly known as Sheila Wright née Carr, leans over and kisses her son's forehead. "Good night, Aldus," she whispers. She stands and walks over to the small motel room's even smaller washroom, where her husband is finishing washing up before turning in for bed. It has been five years since they'd changed their names again and left their home in the dead of night. Four years since they read in the newspaper that their previous home had been set ablaze and had burned to the ground. Edith mourned for the family that had moved in, but she is also glad that they took everything of Aldus's with them; the longer Savage remains ignorant of their child's existence, the better._

 _"_ _Do you think it's enough?" she whispers, keeping her voice low, knowing that Aldus has a tendency to try and listen in on his parents' conversations, "Running from one city to the next?"_

 _Joe towels off his wet face and turns to look at her. "It has to be."_

 _Edith wants to say that running away has never helped before, aside from their life as Hannibal and Kate, and even then it only kept_ _ **her**_ _alive into her sixties. But she doesn't want to scare Aldus. So she kisses her husband before turning to brush her own teeth._

 _Their motel room only has one bed, so the three of them share it, ten-year-old Aldus in between his parents. He's getting to an age where snuggling with his parents is something he balks at, but sometimes he just has to deal with it._

 _And so when Edith wakes with a start, it immediately wakes her husband and son. "He's here!" she gasps._

 _Joe immediately leaps into action, jumping out of bed and running to the tiny window. He turns back to face them with an expression she's seen in many lifetimes before this. "He's right outside," he gasps._

 _There's no way for them to escape. No way to run without being seen. Edith realises that this is the end, for this life. But she can't let Aldus die along with them. Spotting the tiny closet, she takes her son's hand and pulls him out of bed. "In here," she whispers, "Aldus, you must hide."_

 _"_ _Mommy!" Aldus whimpers. He can tell how scared his parents were, and it's scaring him._

 _"_ _Aldus, listen to me," she insists, not caring that her tears are running down her face, "You need to hide in here, and whatever you hear, do not make a sound,_ _ **do not open the door**_ _. I love you_ _ **so much**_ _, my darling." She kisses him on the forehead again, moving only to let Joe do the same before putting Aldus in the closet with their suitcases and shutting the door._

 _Just in time, too. The door flies open, the lock proving useless. Edith and Joe flinch away from the flying shards of wood and see the silhouette of their eternal hunter standing in the doorway. Joe charges at him first, wings flaring out behind him, determined to protect his family. In the confined space, it's impossible to tell who is winning the fight, and Edith jumps in to help. Savage grabs her throat while simultaneously blocking an attack from Joe. "Please, my love," he says, in that falsely sad tone, "Let us not continue this cursed cycle." As if constantly pursuing them and killing them isn't his choice. Edith kicks out, her bare foot crashing into his chest and forcing him to let her go. Joe escapes from his grip, and deals an uppercut to Savage's chin, knocking him to the floor. For a second, Edith thinks that maybe, just maybe, they can knock him out and escape._

 _But then, almost too fast to be seen, a silver flash shoots out of Savage's hand and strikes Joe in the chest. Her husband looks down in shock at the hilt of the dagger protruding from his body before crumpling to the floor._

 _"_ _JAMES!" she shrieks, using his real name in this life for the first time in a long time. Turning her eyes onto his killer, she feels the rage bubble up inside her, her own wings bursting from her back. She grabs Savage by the lapels of his coat, lifting him up and slamming him back into the floor. Once, twice, three times._

 _But she's made the mistake of leaving his hands free. They shoot up and grasp her throat again, crushing her windpipe and making it impossible to breathe. She abandons smashing him into the ground in order to try and wrench his fingers from her throat. But he's too strong._

 _As black spots begin to dance in front of her vision, she closes her eyes and pictures her son one last time, silently praying for his safety._

* * *

 _Saturday, October 18th, 1975, 12:31am_

 _NIGHT ONE ON THE WAVERIDER_

"Aldus!" Kendra woke with her son's name on her lips and tears in her eyes. The dream had felt so _real_ ; she could remember the smell of the motel bedsheets and Aldus's shampoo as she kissed him goodbye, feel the carpet under her toes and Savage's fingers around her throat.

Most of all, she remembered her son. The little boy who would become the man whose hand she held as he died.

Suddenly, the room became too small for her to stand. She could never stay in bed after a nightmare. Wrapping her blanket around her shoulders, she left the quarters Captain Hunter had given her and shuffled down the hall, eventually finding herself on the bridge. The swirling green light of the Temporal Zone made everything look eerie, causing her to shiver. She was considering finding someplace else to go when the sound of a child's voice caught her attention.

It was coming from the office-like area behind the Jump Seats, a space Kendra hadn't paid much attention to beforehand. Rip was slumped on a sofa, staring dejectedly at a hologram of a little boy. He was roughly eight years old, with dirty blonde hair. He told Rip that "We miss you", and added "and love you" when a female voice prompted him from 'off-screen'.

Jonas, she realised.

Rip looked up, and it hit Kendra that she'd said it out loud. The (ex-)Time Master hit a button on the small remote control in his hand, causing the hologram to wink out. It then hit Kendra that she'd stumbled onto an intensely personal moment.

"I-I'm sorry, I didn't mean to intrude, I just…"

"It's alright," Rip sighed, standing up, "I really should get some rest, anyway."

He walked past Kendra towards the door she'd came from, and something compelled her to say: "He looks like you." Rip froze, and Kendra wished she hadn't said anything at all. "I'm sorry, I-"

"You're not the first person who said that." There was a faint note of wry amusement. "Everywhere we went together, someone would comment on it. He has… _had_ his mother's eyes, though."

There was so much pain in his voice, even more than when he first told the team about his family. It was like a piece of him had been torn out, and Kendra wasn't sure how she knew that until she remembered Aldus. "Does it ever get better?" she asked shakily.

Rip now turned to look at her, but said nothing.

"I- I mean, I didn't even know Aldus until today, and I couldn't remember him, even when he was dying, but tonight, I…" She was forced to pause and swallow a huge lump in her throat. "I- I- I had a dream about him. And I remembered him, on the night we died, and I remember how much I loved him and… and…"

Then the tears finally came. They ran down her face like waterfalls as sobs shook her entire body, and suddenly Rip's arms were around her and pulling her close. She cried into his shoulder, unable to do anything else as the grief finally hit her.

"I wish I had an answer for you," she heard him whisper raggedly, "All I can do is focus on my mission. On bringing my wife and son back. I know we can't do the same for Aldus, but… there are other things."

Like killing Savage.

Like killing Chronos.

Kendra had never really been a violent person, not in this life, and as far as she knew, not in any others. But Rip was right; the very thought of taking the lives of the bastards who'd taken hers and her son's gave her something else to focus on. It wasn't perfect by any means, but it was _something_.

She hadn't wanted to come on this mission in the first place, and had only done so for Carter, for the nebulous connection between them. But in that moment, Kendra swore she would see this through.

For Aldus.

* * *

 **Okay, so it ended a bit darker than I expected, but here it is!**

 **Next week will be Stein's chapter. Which I haven't even begun to write. And I'm going away for the weekend with no wifi. Uh oh.**


	3. A Partner's Responsibility

**The votes are in for the 2016 Captain Canary Awards. Sadly, I didn't win anything, but the fact that I was nominated at all - three times, no less! - feels great. Thanks to everyone who voted for me, anyway!**

 **DISCLAIMER: I don't own Legends of Tomorrow. All dialogue in the dream (besides the obvious alterations) is from Flash S2E1 'The Man Who Saved Central City'.** **The name Stacie Jackson comes from Stacie Greenwell, the actress who played Jax's mom in the 'River of Time' flashbacks.**

 **WORD COUNT: 1509**

* * *

"Sometimes the hardest part isn't letting go, but rather learning to start over." – Nicole Sobon

* * *

 _Friday, May 15_ _th_ _, 2015_

 _It's working. Martin can see the swirling mass of black clouds and debris cease to grow. It isn't stopping yet, but it is still stabilising._

 _"Brilliant!" he cries, "He's contained the Singularity by adding to its angular momentum!"_

 _"Barry, it's stabilizing!" Cisco fairly yells into his cell phone, "Keep doing what you're doing!" He pauses as Barry says something – Martin can't quite hear._

 _"Now what?" Joe asks loudly, to be heard over the roaring wind and the terrified screams._

 _"We have to merge the inner and outer event horizons," Martin concludes._

 _"How do we do that?" Ronald asks._

 _That is the difficult part. "By separating in the eye of it." Though he's still looking at the Singularity, he's aware of Ronald's shock, and that the others must be looking at him with the same emotion. "The amount of energy from the fissure should do the trick!" He looks back, and sees that Caitlin isn't just shocked – she's horrified. God only knows Clarissa would be as well if she knew what they are about to do. Martin can feel Ronald's fear creeping over their psychic link; in fact, some of it may be his own. He's well aware of how dangerous it will be. But if they stand by and do nothing, then Barry will eventually tire out, and the Singularity will resume its expansion, consuming the entire planet and everything – and everyone – on it. "It's our only hope, Ronald."_

 _"Ronnie, no," Caitlin protests, "It's too dangerous. What if you can't escape the inrush?"_

 _But Martin can feel Ronald coming to a decision, his determination to at least make the attempt. "Cait, we have to try." He kisses his wife, love and desperation flooding over. Martin wishes Clarissa were here, so that they could do the same. Then his young partner steps away, and the two merge into Firestorm and fly into the vortex._

 _As they enter, they can see Barry running in a circle along the plethora of debris, already beginning to tire. He looks up at them, and seems to realise what they are planning to do. "No!" he shouts desperately._

 _But it has to be done. As one, Ronald and Martin hit the Quantum Splicer, separating in the eye of the temporal storm._

 _Martin sees his partner as they are forced apart. But instead of Ronald, he sees a different face. Younger, with darker skin and shorter hair. Practically still a child._

 _And then Martin is falling, falling, with no way to stop, and the feeling that something is **wrong** , very **wrong**. A pair of arms seizes him around the middle, before jerking him in a new direction and then suddenly coming to a halt. Martin feels his head resting on concrete and the warmth of another body beside him. Hears their laboured breathing._

 _But it's what he **doesn't** feel that quickly gathers all of his attention. Something is missing. And then he realises it. **Jefferson** is missing. He's gotten so used to the younger man's presence in his mind or alongside it, that its absence is like a knife to the heart. How could he be gone? Has their link somehow been severed?_

 _A hand rests on his shoulder, and Martin opens his eyes and looks up to see Barry crouched down beside him. No one else is there._

 _"Jefferson?" he asks. Where is Jefferson? But the look in Barry's eyes says that it's far worse than their link simply being severed. And the young speedster shakes his head. Jefferson is gone. Really gone. "Jefferson…"_

 _Barry stands as the rest of their team, minus the already-deceased Edward, approaches them. Det. West pats Barry on the arm before coming to check on Martin. Iris and Stacie Jackson stop, stricken, when they realise who is missing. Mrs. Jackson looks around, bewildered, not wanting it to be true. Barry puts a hand on her shoulder, telling her he's sorry, and then holds the newly-childless woman as she sobs into his shoulder._

* * *

 _Sunday, October 19_ _th_ _, 1975, 10:33pm_

 _NIGHT THREE ON THE WAVERIDER_

Martin couldn't say this was the first time that he had dreamed of young Ronald's death, not by a long shot, but this _was_ the first time that it had unfolded in such a way. Seeing Jefferson in Ronald's place was new, not that the fear hadn't been present before. In truth, it had been there the moment he was told he would need a new Firestorm partner in order to survive. Not just the fear for his own life, but the fear that he might lose someone else.

He and Ronald had become quite close during their training in Pittsburgh. Aside from his infuriating stubbornness and his contagious addiction to pizza, the younger man had been quite intelligent for his age, and admirable in his readiness to risk his life for others, especially the one he loved. Being the one to marry Ronald and Caitlin together had been one of the proudest moments in Martin's life.

Martin wasn't certain how much of the loss he felt was the emptiness on the other end of their connection as Firestorm, and how much was genuine grief for the death of such a promising young man, of his friend. But it had _hurt_ , in ways words could not describe. To open himself up to such pain again had been tremendously difficult, but the alternative had promised to be even worse.

But tonight… Tonight, Jefferson had gone charging into a fight without him, with only the two malcontents who'd practically kidnapped him in the first place to back him up (Jefferson had insisted that he'd willingly gone with Mr. Snart and Mr. Rory on their little expedition, but Martin didn't quite trust anything when it came to their resident thieves). And yes, he'd come out of the battle unharmed, but he had still been taking a tremendous risk, going into a fight without his Firestorm powers. Without them, Jefferson was just an ordinary, albeit kind and courageous, twenty-year-old mechanic with a bad knee, and the whole world to his widowed mother. He had no special armour or weapons like Raymond or the 'Rogues', no assassin training like Ms. Lance.

The boy could have been killed, tonight, and the last thing Martin wanted to do was to tell someone else that their loved one was never coming back to them. He'd selfishly brought Jefferson along on this adventure against his will, so if the boy died, it would all be his fault. At least Ronald's sacrifice and death had been his own choice, the circumstances leading up to it mostly beyond their control.

A knock on his door startled Martin out of his thoughts. "C-Come in," he responded. The door swished open, to reveal his anxious-looking partner. "Jefferson? Is everything alright?"

"You tell me," Jefferson replied, "You're the one who woke me up."

"How? I'd think these walls would be thick enough to- Oh. Right. Our psychic link."

While the link, thankfully, did not force them to share dreams when separated, it had a few times before woken one of them up when one had a nightmare (usually Martin, though Jefferson had more than his pride would let him admit, thanks to those horror movies he loved so much). It was disconcerting, but better than when he and Ronald had spent that year forced together – sometimes Martin would dream of home and Clarissa, sometimes he'd find himself dreaming of the pretty, young brunette that he later learned to be Caitlin Snow. Martin hadn't been able to completely understand why this woman that he'd never met would take Clarissa's place in his mind, before he began to comprehend the fact that it was actually _another_ mind that had been bonded to his.

He turned back to Jefferson. "It's fine, Jefferson, just…" He sighed. "Try to be more careful next time?" He could feel Jefferson's confusion, so he continued before the boy could ask. "Tonight, you went into battle with no powers, and I know you did well and weren't hurt, but next time, just please, try not to take such risks."

Jefferson was annoyed, clearly, by Martin's efforts to convince him to be careful. Like a child who found his parents' safety rules to be tiresome. "I promise," he said dully, nodding and walking away, shutting the door behind him.

Martin sighed. Jefferson was still young, still so sure that he wouldn't die so soon in life. It was Martin's responsibility to make sure Jefferson was kept safe. He couldn't let the boy and his mother down.

Not like he'd let down Ronald and Caitlin.

* * *

 **So yeah, this basically leads into the conflict between Jax and Stein in 'White Knights'. Next week will be Ray's chapter.**


	4. Two Paths of Grief

**WARNING: This chapter contains the darkest (in my opinion) flashback so far. I wasn't even planning on making it this bad when I started writing it. Aside from murder, there is also an incident of rape in this chapter, so if this causes any problems, you might want to skip the entire flashback just to be safe. I'm going to be upping the rating on this fic to M because of it.**

 **DISCLAIMER: I don't own Legends of Tomorrow. Or Arrow.**

 **WORD COUNT: 1652**

* * *

"Out of suffering can emerge the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars." – Kahlil Gibran

* * *

 _Wednesday, May 14_ _th_ _, 2014_

 _They're everywhere. Masked men with impossible strength running around, destroying and killing everything and everyone they can get their hands on. The streets are filled with chaos, and it's all Ray can do to think straight and try and find somewhere safe. Anna is terrified, gripping his hand so tightly that her engagement ring is cutting into his hand._

 _They're hiding behind an abandoned car with smoke pouring out from under the hood, courtesy of the huge dent in it. Ray checks to see if the coast is clear; when he thinks it's safe, he whispers to Anna: "Come on, let's go."_

 _They make a dash to a door across the street, praying it's unlocked and somewhere safe to hide, when Ray is hit by something rushing at him on his left side. He's lifted off his feet, Anna's hand being wrenched from his, and lands on the ground_ _ **hard**_ _. He looks up, trying to get his breath back, and sees one of the masked men standing over his fiancée._

 _"_ _Anna!" He grabs a conveniently located piece of pipe and charges, desperate to do_ _ **something**_ _. The monster looks back up as he approaches, and actually chuckles as he easily catches the pipe with one hand and Ray's throat with the other. Ray can't breathe as he gets lifted off his feet. Then he's thrown down, feeling what may be the breaking of bones as he hits the sidewalk, and then something comes crashing down on his leg, and he_ _ **knows**_ _the bone has been broken. Then there's the blow to the head, and everything goes black._

 _When he wakes up, some unknown time later, it's to a horrifying, heart-wrenching scream._

 _"_ _RAY!"_

 _He forces his eyes open, and immediately wishes he hadn't. The man – no, the_ _ **monster**_ _– has picked Anna up off the ground and shoved her against the wall, but that's not the worst part. He's rhythmically thrusting his body against hers as she screams and cries. Ray thinks he might even be hearing her bones break._

 _"_ _Anna!" Ray croaks, trying to push himself up, even though his leg is causing him more pain than he's ever experienced. He tries a step forward, but his vision goes black again, and the next thing he knows, his face is smacking into the gritty sidewalk. But he pushes himself back up, determined to get to her. He has to protect her. He has to protect the woman he loves. But he's reduced to crawling along the ground, until he's almost close enough to grab the monster by the ankle._

 _The monster seems to be finished by that time. Looking down at him, Ray can imagine he's grinning triumphantly behind the mask._

 _Then he looks back at Anna and grabs her head in both hands, and_ _ **twists**_ _. With a sickening_ crack _, he snaps her neck, and lets her drop beside Ray._

 _Her eyes are still open, one final tear running down her cheek. But he can still hear her voice._

 _"_ _Why didn't you save me?"_

 _Anna, I'm so sorry._

 _"_ _I thought you loved me."_

 _I do, I love you so much._

 _"_ _Then_ _ **why**_ _? Why am I dead?"_

* * *

 _Saturday, June 2_ _nd_ _, 2046, 12:48am_

 _NIGHT SEVEN ON THE WAVERIDER_

"Anna…"

"Dr. Palmer?"

"Anna!"

"Raymond!"

"ANNA!"

"WAKE UP!"

With an inarticulate scream, Ray bolted upright, nearly crashing into the person leaning over him and shaking him.

"Raymond!" the person said, "Raymond, look at me!"

It took a while, but eventually his eyes found Professor Stein's face. His glasses were missing and his hair was mussed, like he just rolled out of bed. But Ray barely noticed this. His mind was still screaming 'AnnaAnnaAnna'.

"Good, now I need you take deep breaths with me, alright? Like this."

Not knowing what else to do, Ray followed the instructions he was being given, breathing in and out slowly, and soon he could think again. He was in his room, on the Waverider, and Anna had died a long time ago.

He and the Professor were also not alone. The door to his room was open, and literally entire team was standing in the doorway, staring at him with varying degrees of concern. "Ray?" Kendra asked hesitantly, "Are you alright?"

Embarrassed to be caught like this in front of everyone, Ray stammered: "Y-yeah. Yeah, I'm fine."

Mick didn't linger, grunting and presumably going back to his room. Snart left next, though he gave Ray a look in which, if this weren't _Snart_ , the scientist wouldn't think he was imagining the touch of actual concern he saw. The rest stayed, until the Professor turned to them. "Why don't you all go back to bed?" One by one, the others left; first Rip, then Jax, then Kendra, and finally Sara, who looked like she knew exactly what he'd been dreaming about. Given that she'd been present _during_ the Siege, and could possibly have heard about Anna from the other members of Team Arrow, it was likely that she did.

Stein didn't follow them out. Instead, he pulled Ray's desk chair over and took a seat.

"I'm fine, Professor, really," Ray protested, "You don't have to-"

"I was expecting this, Raymond," Stein began, cutting Ray off, "after what you've experienced tonight, and what you and Ms. Lance had to relive."

Ray scrubbed his hand over his face. "What are you talking about?" But of course, he knew exactly what the Professor was talking about.

"Raymond, we were just in a Star City that had been run over and destroyed by Grant Wilson. Given that you and Ms. Lance were both witness to the original Siege led by his father, Slade Wilson, it's only natural that those memories would be brought back to the surface."

Ray shuddered, drawing the blankets around himself. "I know, I know, it's just… I kept hearing her, asking me why I didn't save her. Even after she was dead."

The Professor sighed. "I thought it might be something like that. Do you know how many dreams I've had, in which Ronald needed my help, and I was unable to save him?" He huffed a sad-sounding half-laugh. "It's a rhetorical question, of course. Even I have lost count. But I keep Ronald's memory close to me, a reminder of what's at stake. And I use it to move forward." The Professor paused again, seeming hesitant. "Tell me, do you know what motivated Slade Wilson to attack Starling City in the first place?"

Ray shook his head. He only knew that the madman had a vendetta against Oliver for something that happened on Lian Yu. Upon hearing it, Ray had been angry at Oliver, for all of a minute. Then he'd let it go, because he knew that his friend hadn't intended to cause the Siege, that there had been no way of knowing, back when he'd done whatever he'd done, that it would lead to so much death and destruction.

"It was grief, Raymond. I did some research on the Siege through Gideon, after hearing about you and Anna. Mr. Wilson had fallen in love, and blamed Oliver Queen for the woman's death. Love and grief were what led to the tragedy. And perhaps guilt, at being unable to save her. What little Sara has told me of him from before his beloved's death paints a completely different picture, one of a good man who wouldn't let his comrades face danger alone. Between his loss and some sort of drug he was influenced by, it warped him. Changed him, into the monster who would cause so many more other tragic losses."

Ray frowned. "What are you getting at?"

"The difference, Dr. Palmer, between you and Slade Wilson. Wilson took his grief and used it to create more, to make others suffer just as he did. You, Raymond, did the opposite. You built your A.T.O.M. Suit to help save lives, and prevent others from suffering what you have. …Perhaps you were unable to save Anna, but that night was the catalyst that has allowed you to save countless others, and I believe she would be proud of you."

Ray thought about that. Anna had always been so encouraging of him, of his ideas to help make the world a better place. He'd continued to do that with PalmerTech after she'd died, to honour her memory, but his belief in that had taken a hit when he'd come back from the 'dead' to find all his efforts in ruin, his company in the red and his previous achievements already forgotten.

The Professor must have decided his work was done, because he gave Ray a comforting pat on the shoulder and stood up to leave. But there was just one little thing Ray had to ask him. "Professor? When you said you did your research on the Siege, was it just on Grant Wilson, or…"

Stein shook his head. "I did not pry into your personal files, Raymond, I assure you." Thankfully, he didn't seem offended by the question.

Ray was just glad the older scientist didn't look at Anna's file. What that monster had done before killing her couldn't exactly be called a secret – the coroner who did the autopsy, the people who investigated the crime, and everyone at the monster's trial knew what else Ray had failed to protect her from. But that didn't mean he liked to share that with anyone else.

* * *

 **Yeah... I wasn't even planning on adding the rape element when I started writing this, but considering Slade used a bunch of convicted criminals to build his army, I can imagine that that happened at some point during the Siege. Sorry Ray and Anna!**

 **Next week's is Sara, so that one's going to be pretty bad, too.**


	5. You Don't Have to Do It Alone

**This one honestly veered off into a completely different direction than what I intended, so much that I had to change the chapter title because it no longer fit.**

 **And I'd just like to say something about the two new episodes I've seen so far. 'Out of Time' was nothing short of awesome. I loved pretty much every second of it. 'The Justice Society of America'... not so much. One phrase can sum up my feelings for the episode, and it is this: Bad first impressions. The Legends did, honestly, make a bad first impression on the JSA, but the JSA spent most of the episode being dismissive, a bit presumptuous, and at some points downright rude to our heroes. They basically made a bad first impression on me. They spent most of the episode acting like the Legends were a bunch of rookies who had to prove themselves to the JSA, when they were really just having an off day. I mean, I'm pretty sure it was barely an hour after they learned they weren't getting their leader back that the JSA showed up. Hopefully Amaya joining the team will at least give her some new perspective.**

 **DISCLAIMER: I don't own Legends of Tomorrow.**

 **WORD COUNT: 1553**

* * *

"One need not be a chamber to be haunted. One need not be a house. The brain has corridors surpassing material place." – Emily Dickenson

* * *

 _There's so much blood everywhere. So many dead bodies. She stands in the middle of a sea of them._

 _Sin, her neck twisted at an impossible angle._

 _Thea, with bruises around her neck and blood dripping from her eyes._

 _Roy, facedown in a pool of blood with his arms outstretched toward the girl he still loves._

 _Dig, curled around a bloody Baby Sara, who is lying in her father's arms like a broken doll._

 _A woman with blood-soaked dark hair, whose face is beaten beyond recognition but she_ _ **knows**_ _it's her mother._

 _Her beloved Nyssa, her throat cut so deeply her spine can be seen._

 _Her Daddy, with a gaping hole in his chest._

 _Felicity, with a long gash across her torso and her crushed glasses lying beside her._

 _Ollie, whose body has actually been cut in half, spilling entrails onto the ground._

 _And Laurel, with three black arrows sticking out of her body, just like the ones that killed her._

 _Their blood is gushing from her hands, pooling around her feet. She has done this. All of it. She wants to run, someplace where there's no one to hurt, but there's nowhere to go._

 _"_ _Monster."_

 _Laurel is looking up at her. Even as she watches, her face begins to rot away._

 _"_ _Killer."_

 _Thea is getting up. They all are, the decaying remnants of her friends and family all rising up._

 _"_ _You did this to us."_

 _No. No, she didn't mean it. She didn't want to._

 _"_ _You are a monster. A killer."_

 _They're reaching for her, grabbing her arms and pulling her down as the ground beneath her feet changes into the waters of the Lazarus Pit. Desperately, she reaches for the ledge and clings to it, but they keep pulling her._

 _"_ _Join us in Hell. It's what you deserve."_

 _Her grip slips, and she's plummeting into darkness._

* * *

 _Wednesday, June 6_ _th_ _, 2046, 3:46am_

 _NIGHT ELEVEN ON THE WAVERIDER_

Sara Lance was no stranger to nightmares. Since the _Queen's Gambit_ had sunk – and nearly taken her with it – she honestly had more nights plagued with them than nights without. So when she woke up screaming yet again, it was nothing new. She took a few minutes to steady her breathing, as usual, then got up to get a drink of water from the kitchen – sorry, the galley.

She rarely met anyone there during the night. Rip was more likely to be moping in his office, whenever he was up at this time of night. So when she was greeted with the back of a slumped-over Ray, it came as a bit of a surprise. She wasn't sure what to do, but then he let out a soft snore and Sara figured she could sneak past him and around the bar, get her water, and get back to her room without waking him.

And she would have, but it seemed Ray wasn't exactly a still and peaceful sleeper. He muttered something about dwarf stars, hypotenuses, and talking snowmen, then shifted in his sleep, slightly pushing his half-full coffee mug towards the counter's edge. But Sara didn't notice, as her back was to him while grabbing a glass from a cupboard. She was just filling it at the sink when Ray blurted out something about Frosty and his arm jerked again, this time knocking the mug off the table before Sara could reach over to catch it.

 _CRASH!_

The loud sound had Ray jumping out of his seat with an even louder yell. And since his position hadn't given him any advantage in balance whatsoever… well, the scientist promptly disappeared from view with a resounding _thud_ , followed by a low groan.

Sara stood frozen. She'd seen so many unspeakable things, but that was… that was like something out of a sitcom!

And it got even better when she peered over the bar to see Ray rubbing his sore rump. He didn't even notice the ex-assassin looking down at him until he tried to stand, as he glanced up to grab the edge of the bar's tabletop to pull himself up. He then yelped and fell back on his ass.

Sara couldn't help it. She lifted her hand to cover her mouth, but not before a laugh burst from her lips.

Ray scowled at her. "Yeah, yeah, real funny."

"It _is_!" Rolling her eyes, she walked around the bar and offered Ray a hand. She pulled him up to his feet, a smirk still on her face. "That was like something out of a cartoon." She shook her head. "What were you doing sleeping here, anyway?"

"I didn't mean to," Ray protested, "I was just researching this new upgrade for the A.T.O.M. Suit, and came here for a coffee refill. I was feeling a little tired so I figured I could just, you know, rest my eyes a little. I guess I rested them more than I planned to."

Sara arched an eyebrow. "And were you planning to stay up all night, after researching all day?"

"Well, I guess. Once I'm on a roll, it's not a good idea to stop. I could wake up, go to work again, and just be… stuck. Because I lost my momentum." He frowned down at the mess of coffee and broken ceramic on the floor. "Damn it." He started to bend down to pick it up, but winced and grabbed at his back. "Ow…"

"I'll get that." Sara crouched down and began carefully picking up the larger pieces.

"Thanks. Ooh, that's going to be even worse in the morning."

"Technically it _is_ morning already – it's nearly four. You should get to the Med Bay, Gideon'll get you an ice pack or something, and then _get some sleep_. You're no good to us sleep-deprived."

"Yeah, yeah, I'll do that. What're you doing up so late, anyway? I mean, early?"

Sara shrugged. "The League trains all its assassins to operate on as little sleep as possible. I physically _can't_ sleep a whole night."

"Oh. I thought it was a… something else." He looked uncomfortable saying that, and avoided looking her in the eye.

It didn't take a genius to figure out what the genius had assumed. Especially since he was right. "A nightmare?" At Ray's embarrassed flush, like a kid who'd been caught doing something wrong, she decided to just go with it. "It's okay to say it. Considering all the things I've seen, you should be more disturbed if they _didn't_ give me nightmares." She shrugged. "I'm used to them, okay?"

"You shouldn't have to be." Ray's tone was very serious.

"I know. But that's the way it is. I go to sleep, bad things happen, I wake up, and I remember that it either didn't happen or happened a long time ago. Then I move on with my day."

"And… that's it? You don't talk about it with anyone?"

Sara laughed. Unlike the last one, this had no humour in it whatsoever. "Talk to someone? Know anybody else who's been dead for a year? Anyone who could possibly have any idea what it's like?"

"No." Still dead serious. "But I do know what it's like to be gone from home for a long time, to be thought dead, and to come back and find out that everything's changed, so much that I don't feel I have a place there anymore."

At that, Sara paused. She'd never talked about that to Ray. But he _had_ been presumed dead, just like she had. And he'd come back to a company in the red, and a city that he'd wanted to make better but that had only gotten worse while he was gone.

She'd been gone for six years, and had come home to divorced parents, a resentful, alcoholic sister, and an ex who was tearing himself apart trying to save the city. She'd tried to fit back into her old life, her family, but it just hadn't worked. Because her home had changed, _she_ had changed, and she couldn't just fit back into the way things were before. Like a puzzle piece that had changed shape trying to fit into its original slot, which had also been altered.

Sara wasn't sure how long she'd been silent, but she looked up when Ray started talking again. "I don't think there's anyone who can relate to _everything_ you've been through. But there are people out there who understand parts of it. And I know from experience that talking about it _can_ actually help. I'm not asking you to talk to me right now. But… the option's open, if you ever want it. You don't have to deal with it on your own."

And he turned and staggered out of the room, leaving Sara alone in her thoughts.

* * *

 **So yeah, I intended for Sara to talk to Ray about her actual nightmare, about how she still feels like she's a monster. But then I figured she needed to deal with _not_ talking about it, first. That'll probably come later, as writing this story made me realise that I've written myself into a corner. In 'I Pushed Him Away', I wrote that Sara would often go to Leonard when she had nightmares. But when I wrote 'Dear Lisa', which is almost entirely from Len's perspective, I didn't include that at all. So while I have no solid plans for it at the moment, that's a story that needs to be written (I'll say Len never mentioned it because it was personal enough to Sara that he decided not to put it down in a journal meant for his sister to read).**

 **Anyway, next chapter is going to be Len's. I'd already written his and Mick's chapters months ago, so now I've only got two chapters left to write, and an extra two weeks to do it. See you then!**


	6. Choose

**So, finally I get to post the first chapter I actually wrote. This was directly referred to in Chapter 9 of 'Dear Lisa' (which is why I wrote it first). The nightmare is shorter than most, and the conversation after turned out to be more about Sara than Len, but Len doesn't really do the whole 'talking about his feelings' thing, anyway.**

 **DISCLAIMER: I don't own Legends of Tomorrow**

 **WORD COUNT: 1798**

* * *

"Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light." – Helen Keller

* * *

 _Leonard feels like he can't breathe as he stares at the two bloody and beaten women in front of him. Lisa is crying, unable to believe that her friend could do this to her. Sara is angry, glaring at the man standing behind him despite the blood dripping into her eyes._

 _"_ _Choose," his former partner growls in his ear, "Choose which one lives and which one dies."_

 _It should be easy. Lisa is his baby sister, his everything. He'd give his own life for hers in a heartbeat. But the thought of Sara dying again so soon after coming back makes him sick. He hesitates, not knowing what to do._

 _Sara shifts her gaze to him, and her face softens. "It's okay, Leonard. Family comes first."_

 _He understands what she's telling him: To save Lisa and let her die. Because Sara will still give her life for others even when the world has put her through so much already, and because Sara knows that Lisa is the only real family Leonard has left. She's chosen another person over her family before, and the result was nothing short of a disaster. She won't let him make the same mistake._

 _Leonard opens his mouth to give his answer, but he still can't. He can't put Sara to death. He can't put Lisa to death._

 _Chronos chuckles. "Can't decide? Fine. I guess they both die."_

 _He doesn't shoot, but suddenly both women burst into pillars of flame, their screams drowning out his own. "NOOOOO!"_

* * *

 _Saturday, March 19_ _th_ _, 1960_

 _NIGHT SEVENTEEN ON THE WAVERIDER_

Leonard bolted upright with a half-strangled yell, eyes wide in fear and grief. He gasped for breath when he realised that he couldn't see a thing; he was surrounded by darkness. Panic and adrenaline still surging through his system, he scrambled off whatever he'd been lying on, trying to figure out where the hell he was. His head spun unexpectedly, and his knees buckled. He dropped to the floor, feeling something pull on his wrist.

"Mr. Snart?"

He froze. He knew that voice.

"Mr. Snart?"

The lights slowly rose to illuminate the room and allow him to recognise it as the Med Bay. He'd been lying on one of the beds there, and the IV cuff was still attached to his wrist, which explained the tugging. Swallowing and taking a deep breath, Leonard did his best to calm down. It was just a dream. The third dream he'd had since falling asleep in the Med Bay after regenerating his hand.

"Mr. Snart, are you alright?" Gideon asked again, "Shall I administer another dose of sedative?"

Leonard sighed, removing the cuff. "Gideon, do you know the definition of insanity?"

"The Oxford Dictionary defines insanity as 'The state of being seriously mentally ill; madness' or 'Extreme foolishness or irrationality'."

"I'm talking about the Einstein quote," he growled as he shakily got to his feet.

"'Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.'"

"Exactly. If it didn't work the last three times, it's not going work a fourth." Steadying himself against the wall, he began to shuffle towards the door. "I can sleep it off in my own room."

"Mr. Snart, I would not recommend-"

"Gideon, exactly what good is sleeping in the Med Bay if the meds aren't going to help? I sleep better in a familiar space, anyway."

That was apparently enough to convince Gideon, because the Med Bay doors slid open when he approached. He vaguely remembered being dragged through there by Kendra, unable to support his own weight as the adrenaline that had allowed him to charge through Nanda Parbat with a newly-severed limb had left him. He was still exhausted from the regeneration process and from his whole ordeal that day, so it was slow going, moving step by step towards his room with the wall helping him stay vertical.

He was almost there when another door swished open. A short, blonde-haired figure froze upon exiting and seeing him there. "Snart?" Sara asked, "What the hell are you doing? You should be in the Med Bay!"

Leonard rolled his eyes. "Gideon's sleep aides weren't helping; I figured I'd sleep better in my own room." He tried to continue on, but he stumbled, his strength fading from the walk.

The hand gripping his shoulder startled him, causing him to flinch. Unexpected touch had rarely meant anything good for him. His eyes snapped up to meet Sara's, seeing her look at him with concern. Without asking his permission, but slowly so as to make it easier on him, she pulled his arm over her shoulders and began to half-carry him down the hallway in the direction of his room.

"Lance, what the hell-"

"I'm not getting up in the morning to find you passed out in the hallway. Everyone has limits, Snart, even you. Learn them."

Leonard wanted to argue, but the fact that he was too tired to do so kind of proved her point. So he just did his best to keep pace with Sara, who was thankfully taking it slow enough that she didn't have to fully support his weight. He suspected she could, though; he'd quickly learned that this woman was not to be underestimated, and she'd already proven she was stronger than she looked.

He felt like falling asleep the second he sat down on his bed, but his curiosity seemed to take over his mouth. "What're you doing up, anyway?"

Sara shrugged. "In the League, we're trained to operate on really small amounts of sleep. I'd started to get back to a normal sleep schedule by the time Rip recruited us, but now I just can't sleep more than a few hours at a time." She paused. "Was there anything in particular keeping you up?"

Leonard shook his head. He didn't want to talk to _anyone_ about his nightmares; never had, really. But he especially didn't want to tell Sara that he'd seen her die, that he hadn't been able to save her or Lisa, even though he'd had the chance.

"Mr. Snart was woken by nightmares three times tonight," Gideon blabbed, "Most likely caused by the stress of his earlier abduction and the injuries he sustained while escaping."

Leonard threw a heated glare at the ceiling, where Gideon's voice seemed to be coming from. "Shut up, Gideon," he growled. Really, someone needed to teach the AI how to mind her own business.

Sara gave him a small half-smile. "Yeah, I guessed as much," she said calmly. At his startled look – how had she known?! – she continued: "What, you think you're the only one on this ship with demons?"

Leonard avoided her gaze. "Of course not." He knew perfectly well that their resident assassin had things that would haunt her at night, and the others probably had something that he just didn't know about. "But it's none of your business what I dream about, or what I choose, or-"

"Choose?" Now Sara looked confused. Dammit, he hadn't meant for that to slip out. He really _was_ tired.

He sighed. "The last one… I had to choose between my sister and… and the team." He didn't want to tell her that she'd been the only one he'd had to choose against Lisa. He still didn't understand why that was. Sure, he was admittedly closer to Sara than he was to anyone else on the team, but why did the thought of losing her hurt so much? Dammit, he _was_ getting too attached to these people, wasn't he? "I had to choose who lived and who died."

That got a reaction from Sara he wasn't expecting. She got this dark, distant look in her eyes, like her mind was somewhere else – and not a very pleasant somewhere else. "This one time… After the Gambit sank, I was pulled from the water by this man named Anthony Ivo. He was some kind of scientist, searching for some World War Two super-soldier serum created by the Japanese. The only samples of the serum were on a submarine that had been lost in the area. His search took us to Lian Yu, where Oliver had landed and met up with a few people. Anthony was… cruel… beyond words. He had a dozen prisoners on board his boat… his guinea pigs. I had to help him with his experiments so that he wouldn't put me in with them as well. So when I found Oliver, we escaped the ship together and met up with his friends. But Ivo was following us. Sla- One member of our group was badly hurt, and was left behind when Ivo and his men caught up to us. He held me and the other woman, Shado, at gunpoint, and told Oliver to choose who would live and who would die. Oliver refused, but when Ivo turned his gun on me… he made his choice. Ivo killed Shado right in front of us."

There were tears in her eyes, running down her face. Leonard didn't think he'd _ever_ seen her this vulnerable; not in the engine room, not when she was warring with herself over whether or not she should kill Stein in Russia.

"That other friend was named Slade Wilson. He was in love with Shado, and between the grief, the rage, and getting a dose of the super-soldier serum, he went insane, and he became the first Deathstroke. The monster that killed Oliver's mother and laid siege to Starling City two years ago. The same siege that killed Ray's fiancée. The one we saw in 2046 was his son, only he obviously succeeded where his father failed." She took a shuddering breath. "Sometimes I think that if I'd died instead of Shado, none of that would have happened. I know Oliver still blames himself for what Slade became. But that's not right. _Ivo_ was the one who made him choose, just to get some sadistic pleasure. _Anthony Ivo_ is the one to blame for Shado's death, and for Deathstroke." She looked at Leonard for the first time since she started talking. "None of us would blame you for doing what you have to in order to protect your sister, Leonard. Just remember that."

And she walked out, leaving him an impossible mix of unsettled and reassured.

* * *

 **Okay, I hope you liked that one! Next up is Mick.**


	7. What is Your Name?

**This is definitely the longest chapter I've written for this fic yet. And with that, I've come to the end of chapters that were already written before I posted the previous one (okay, so that was only this one and Len's). I'm very nearly done with the next chapter, though.**

 **DISCLAIMER: I don't own Legends of Tomorrow. Or NCIS.**

 **WORD COUNT: 2225**

* * *

"You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live in torment if you don't trust enough." – Frank Crane

* * *

 _"_ _What is your name?"_

 _They've been asking him that same damn question for so long. He can't remember how many times._

 _When he woke up in the Time Masters' infirmary, he thought he'd been saved. The last thing he remembered before that was staring down a big-ass wolf that had been eyeing him like he was easy prey. And he_ _ **had**_ _been easy prey, because he hadn't had anything to eat in days, possibly weeks; even the rats were too fast for him to catch, by then. The Time Masters had apparently stumbled across him on a mission and saved his ass. It didn't even occur to him, when he first got that explanation, that it made no sense for them to be out on a mission in the middle of fucking nowhere. They'd known when and where to find him, somehow._

 _The electric shock courses through his body, just like it does whenever he doesn't give them the answer they want. They know the name he was born with, but they don't care about that; they want him to take on a new name._

 _"_ _What is your name?"_

 _"_ _Heatwave," he growls, using the nickname that Cisco Ramon kid came up with. He has to admit it isn't all that bad._

 _He grits his teeth as they shock him again. He doesn't know how long this has been going on. He's starting to just not care. He doesn't know when it will end, either. They have to get bored of this eventually, right? Before he decides he can't take anymore?_

 _Or after?_

 _There's no other way this can end. Nobody's coming to stop it. Those bastards just abandoned him in the middle of nowhere._ _ **Snart**_ _just abandoned him in the middle of nowhere, their years of partnership – almost thirty of them – meaning nothing now that he has a shiny new team. They can all go screw themselves._

 _But that doesn't mean he wants to become what they want him to become. Then he'd be the guy that shot at his_ _ **own past self**_ _. How stupid is that?_

 _"_ _What is your name?" Shock. "What is your name?" Shock. "What is your name?" Shock._

 _He's starting to wonder if he should just give them the answer they want. He could lie. It's not like he has some moralistic issue with lying. He knows what his name really is; he could tell one little lie if it would just make this_ _ **stop**_ _._

 _"_ _What is your name?"_

 _"_ _Chronos."_

* * *

 _Friday, April 14_ _th_ _, 1871, 12:40am_

 _NIGHT TWENTY-FOUR ON THE WAVERIDER_

Eyes snapped open, a hand moved automatically to the knife he always kept at his waist. It had been drilled into him to always carry some sort of weapon on him, though he'd chosen a knife before he'd completely lost himself, due to Gibbs's Rule Number Nine: 'Never go anywhere without a knife.'

Yes, the career criminal/pyromaniac was an NCIS fan, though he wasn't as willing to admit to that as he was to his love for ninjas.

He didn't recognise his surroundings at first. It had been _lifetimes_ since he'd been in this place. But it came back to him: this was his room on the Waverider. The one he'd chosen when he'd first boarded this tub. It was _his_ space. And, more importantly, it was empty except for him.

Michael 'Mick' Rory sighed and relaxed back down on his bed. This was only his eighth night back on the Waverider, and the fourth one in his own room. He was still getting used to it, to the point that he hadn't slept a full night since being captured in Nanda Parbat. He briefly considered taking Gideon up on her offer to prescribe him a sleep aide, but dismissed the thought almost as quickly as it had appeared. He wasn't going to go crawling to the AI for help. What he really needed was a good, strong drink. Maybe he'd bump into Sara, since her sleep schedule was about as irregular as his own, and they'd have another drinking contest. That would put him to sleep, though maybe faster than his pride would let him admit.

The prospect of booze propelled him to get out of bed and make his way to the bridge, where he planned to break into the alcohol stash Rip had hidden in his office. He and Snart had found it their second night on this mission, and until they'd had their falling-out in 2046, they would routinely break in and have a drink.

Thinking of that still brought a conflicting mix of feelings to the surface. He was still pissed that Snart had chosen these people they barely knew over him. He was still furious at Snart for knocking him over the head not once, not twice, but three times (Rule Number Forty-Two!). But at the same time, his old partner had charged through Nanda Parbat with a freshly severed limb and, at the end of it, had insisted on letting Mick live, even after Mick had threatened Lisa's life. And he'd walked into Mick's cage even after that and had basically offered himself up as a sacrifice, because he had to have known that he couldn't win in a fistfight. Was that for Mick's sake? For Lisa's sake? For both their sakes?

Speak of the devil. Mick passed the galley door and spotted Snart, leaning against the counter with the bar in between him and the door and drinking from a glass tumbler, filled with an amber liquid that presumably came from the liquor bottle by his right elbow. He froze mid-sip when he caught sight of Mick, then slowly set it down. The awkward silence stretched between the two ex-partners for several seconds, then Snart finally broke it. "Want one?" He turned the bottle to display its label; Mick recognised it as being _very_ high-end, and _very_ expensive.

Deciding that he wasn't going to pass up a taste of that, Mick nodded but didn't say anything. Snart silently reached up and got another glass out of the cupboard, setting it and the bottle on the bar and sliding them both over for Mick to catch, which he did easily. The act of pouring it out gave him an excuse not to say anything right away, but it was Snart again who broke the silence.

"So… know anything useful about this Pilgrim chick?"

Mick sighed, though he was grateful that Snart had picked a safe topic to fill the silence. Well, safe-ish. "Mostly through reputation. She hasn't failed to follow through on an assignment, and time-travel assassinations are harder to handle than normal ones. The Time Masters don't want to disturb the timeline any more than necessary, so she has only one shot to take out her target. She can't jump back a week earlier and try again, or anything like that."

Snart narrowed his eyes. "I'm guessing the same restrictions apply to us?" he asked, "We have only one shot to rescue our younger selves?"

"Right in one." He took a deep, slow sip of his drink (you didn't just _chug_ liquor of this quality). "She's just as dangerous as Sara in hand-to-hand, if not more. And she's got something else up her sleeve… No one's sure what it is, except the highest-ranking Time Masters and her targets. The first bunch keeps their mouths shut, and her targets don't exactly get a chance to tell any tales."

That brought a frown to the master thief's face. Three decades of working with him was more enough for Mick to know how much Snart hated wild cards. He preferred to have all the possible factors accounted for, all possible outcomes thought out and ranked in order of likelihood, with back-up plans and adjustments ready for each of them. "Doesn't sound like the Time Masters like to share, not even amongst each other."

"The Pilgrim is only sent after the worst of the worst, and some are ex-Time Masters like Rip, or have had some other involvement with them. Telling everyone whatever it is that she does would take away her best advantage over them."

"Makes sense." There was another long, awkward silence between the two of them. Mick turned his focus back to his drink. Rip really did have all the good stuff when it came to his alcohol stash. "I shouldn't have let them get to you."

Mick snapped his gaze back to Snart, but his old partner's eyes were fixed on his near-empty glass as if he were addressing it.

"Leaving you in that forest… I shouldn't have done that. I should've found another way to…" He sighed. "I don't know."

"You could have picked my side over the team."

 _That_ got Snart's attention. "You know I don't turn my back on my crew," he snapped, "I don't know what it was that made you do it, but I kept my promises."

"To who? To the asshole who lied to us just to get us onto this tub in the first place?"

"Last time I checked, we didn't join up because of that 'Legends' crap he was selling."

"No, we joined up for the score. But that changed, didn't it?" His frustration was bubbling up towards the surface. "Your priorities changed. It stopped being about the score for you. And don't give me that bullshit about wanting the rep of having killed Savage. You know what I think? I think you let this _team_ get under your skin."

Snart glared at him, but the fact that he didn't immediately protest spoke volumes. "I'll give you one thing: my priorities _have_ changed. I want Savage dead because he killed a member of my crew, and I have no intention of letting him or anyone else take out another. And for the record, that still includes you."

Mick eyed him over the rim of his glass. "Which does?"

"Both sides. I could've let you kill the team alongside the space pirates, and I could've let the team kill you at Nanda Parbat. Hell, I could've killed you during the fight with the pirates when you nearly killed Sara. But I didn't. And it's not because I didn't have the guts to. It's because you've been part of my crew for too long for me to just throw you away."

This was new. Mick had never seen Snart being so… open about why he did what he did.

Snart himself seemed to realise this, as he fell silent again, his lips pressed into a thin line.

"You really did plan on coming back for me?"

"Yes. Like I said in Russia: it's you and me. That hadn't changed, Mick. There's just more people added on, now."

That brought a smirk to Mick's face. "Like Sara? I still stand by what I said about you two in 2046."

"And that's still bullshit," Snart growled, "Sara's a teammate, maybe even an actual friend, but _nothing more_."

Yeah, that was the real bullshit. Even after spending lifetimes with the Time Masters, Mick still firmly believed that Snart was falling for the blonde ex-assassin. "If you say so." He all but drained the rest of his glass. "So are we good?"

Snart stared at him. "You gonna threaten my sister again?"

Mick winced. Yeah, that was a line he couldn't believe he'd crossed. "No."

"Then we're good." He threw a half-smirk in Mick's direction, and held out his almost-empty glass. Mick clinked his own against it, and both men threw back the last of their drinks.

"That's good stuff," Mick commented, "Hunter shouldn't leave it sitting in a cupboard."

"Now _that's_ an unforgivable crime," Snart agreed. He put his glass in the sink and circled around the bar. "Better get some rest. If the Pilgrim's even half as dangerous as you said, we're going to need it."

Mick took the bottle with him, following Snart down the hall to the barracks. Their rooms were right next to each other, which had made for some tense and awkward moments over the past few days and that week before he… left. "Hey, Lenny," he called, just as Snart was disappearing into his own room, "Let me know when you pull your head out of your ass about Sara."

"Fuck you, Mick." And he flipped the pyro off and vanished behind his door.

Mick smirked, taking a swig of liquor straight out of the bottle. Yeah, his partner was still in denial. Maybe he should talk to Kendra about that. She seemed like the type who'd be willing to play matchmaker…

* * *

 **And this is where the co-conspiring between Mick and Kendra mentioned in 'Green-Eyed Monster' first developed.**

 **I just thought it would be funny for Mick to be an NCIS fan, partly just as an excuse to mention Gibbs's Rules. Mick also likes Number Six: 'Never say you're sorry; it's a sign of weakness' (he did say he didn't _do_ 'sorry' back in 'Blood Ties'), Number Sixteen: 'If someone thinks they have the upper hand, break it', and Number Forty-Two: 'Never accept an apology from someone who sucker-punched you.'**

 **In case you haven't noticed by now, in my world, the team did not spend five months on the Waverider. With their mission being so urgent, and the team always seeming to be in a race against the clock to get things done despite having a time machine, and the fact that quite a few episodes pick up where the previous one left off, it's just not possible. Also, saying that the time between January and May is five months doesn't quite make any sense - January is Month 1 and May is Month 5. 5 minus 1 equals FOUR. Maybe they could stretch it if it was early Jan to late May, but I tend to take airdates into account, and that doesn't fit. Then again, since when has time on the Arrowverse made a lot of sense?**

 **Next week is Jax! Stay tuned!**

 **Spectre**


	8. Time Wants to Happen

**DISCLAIMER: I don't own Legends of Tomorrow.**

 **WORD COUNT: 1968**

* * *

"A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it." – Jean de La Fontaine

* * *

 _Tuesday, September 26_ _th_ _, 1995_

 _The Humvee swerves violently, jarring the soldiers inside. The driver ignores their swearing, his eyes scanning every inch of the road in front of him with a nervousness bordering on paranoia. The voice of the young man he met two weeks ago echoes in his head, near tears as he begged him to keep his head on a swivel for an IED._

 _He still can't believe that time-travel is real, that he saw his newborn son in the hospital while having a conversation with the same son as a young adult. His Jefferson, telling him that he's going to grow up without a father, because he won't make it out of Mogadishu alive, that he won't get to raise his son or see his Stacie ever again._

 _So as he drives, he's avoiding everything he sees on the road, from litter to what might just be rocks. He wants to hold his boy, wants to watch him grow up to become the hero he saw two weeks ago. He always knew his boy would be meant for great things, but he wants to see it happen. But he has to get out of Somalia alive to do that._

 _They reach their destination soon enough, and begin to pile out. They're in the middle of enemy territory, so they have to stay vigilant. But he can't help feel slight relief. He's gotten through the only slightly hypothetical minefield unscathed. It's only one step; he still has the rest of his deployment to survive, but it's further than he originally got, according to his son. He just has to take it step by step, surviving one new danger at a time, and he'll be able to hold his wife and son once more._

 _Then an enemy sniper's bullet slams through his skull, splattering blood and brains all over his fellow soldiers._

* * *

 _The Refuge, 8:50am_

 _NIGHT TWENTY-FIVE ON THE WAVERIDER_

"DAD!" The scream echoed through the room as the young man bolted up into a sitting position. It took him a while to calm down, to breathe normally again. He was so sure, for a second, that he'd _been_ there, even though he knew all his knowledge of the Somali Civil War came from the books he'd read about the battles, that he only knew what a man getting shot in the head looked like because of movies and TV. But Rip had never said anything about time-travellers getting prophetic dreams, or anything (not that their captain was always open with important information), so there was no way Jax could actually be seeing the results of his efforts to save his father.

The failed results.

Sure, maybe his dad could avoid the IED. But he had been in the middle of a warzone. There were so many ways he could die. What seemed like one of Rip's favourite sayings played in his head: "Time wants to happen."

Kendra and Carter had tried to save their son from a past life, but he'd died even sooner and far more violently than he'd originally been meant to.

Snart had tried to save himself and his sister from a childhood of hell, but his old man had just screwed up in a different way and had still gotten himself arrested.

So how could his dad avoiding death by IED ensure that he'd live through the rest of his deployment? That he'd still be alive twenty years later?

Although he was more than a little afraid of what the answer might be, Jax got up out of bed and went to the bridge, meeting no one on the way as his room was the closest. Thankfully Rip wasn't pulling one of his all-nighters and doing research in his office – it seemed that even the experienced time-traveller was a bit wiped out by the thirteen time-jumps they'd performed in the space of less than 24 hours trying to outmanoeuvre the Pilgrim. Of course, as Jax glanced at his dad's watch, it was nearly nine in the morning. According to Mick and Sara, who were up late almost as often as Rip, even the Time Captain got some sleep in the earliest hours of the morning, and combined with all those time jumps, he would likely still be out like a light.

Jax made his way to the console in the centre of the room. "Gideon, I need you to show me the timeline of my father, Sgt. James Jackson."

"I'm sorry, Mr. Jackson," the AI replied, "but Captain Hunter has asked me to not share that information with you."

"Oh, come on! It's not like it's showing me the future! You let Snart look at his dad's timeline when he tried to change it!"

Then his mind wander to his conversation with Rip after he gave his dad the warning, to how the Time Captain had suggested that maybe time would possibly allow him to grow up with his father. Could Rip have checked for himself and decided that, whatever the results were, he didn't want Jax to see them? Not because of issues with the timeline, but because they were so bad that Rip didn't want Jax to _have_ to see them? "Well, why not?"

"Captain Hunter did not disclose his reasons."

"Well, ain't that a surprise?" Swearing under his breath, he paced up and down the bridge, not wanting to go back to bed without his information just yet.

"You lookin' for something?"

Jax whipped around when Mick's voice came from Rip's office. He didn't see the arsonist at first, until the man in question emerged with a grunt from behind Rip's desk with a bottle of liquor in hand. Of course. Rip's 'secret' liquor stash that pretty much everyone knew about by now. Mick must have already been going through it when Jax entered. "Ah, nothing," Jax lied.

"You do realize I heard everything you were just telling Gideon, right?" Mick opened the bottle and took a drink. "Why're you looking up your old man?"

"I…" Jax sighed, figuring he might as well tell the bigger man, especially since he was the least likely to give him a lecture, anyway, "When we had my dad on board, I tried to warn him about what was going to happen when we put him back in 1995. See, I never knew my father, 'cause he got shipped off to Somalia the day I was born, then got killed by an IED two weeks later. So I told him about it, told him to be careful. I was just trying to see if it worked, but Gideon won't let me."

Mick frowned. "She let Snart check after he gave the emerald to Lewis in '75."

"That's what I said, but apparently Rip's told her not to, this time. I don't know why he's trying to hide it from me."

"Have you _met_ him?" Grumbling, Mick dug through something else in Rip's desk and pulled out two glasses. "Gideon, don't tell Hunter about this. Or Stein." He poured the liquor into the glasses and held one out to Jax.

Deciding that he was more than a bit pissed about Rip's rules and restrictions right now, Jax had no qualms about walking up and accepting it. God knew he could use a drink right now, and he was feeling the urge to commit a little rebellion. He threw it back like he'd seen Mick do all the time, but coughed and sputtered when the alcohol burned his throat.

"Easy, easy," Mick warned him, "First off: you're too new at this to just knock it back. Second: this isn't the kind of booze you chug. If I was in the mood to just get drunk, I'd just grab some beers from the galley. You need to take your time and _appreciate_ stuff of this quality."

Jax nodded, his eyes watering, but set the glass down for now. His throat was burning too much to handle any 'appreciating' at the moment. "Do you steal from Rip's stash every night?"

"Not _every_ night, but more often than not. This stuff was made to be drunk, not sit and collect dust in a hidden cache." He took a deep sip from his own glass and sighed. "Mmm… Now, why in the hell would Rip ban you from knowing what happens to your old man?"

Jax shrugged. "I don't know. I mean, if I _have_ changed my own personal history, shouldn't I be warned about that before I go home? Or maybe…" He trailed off, really not wanting to voice it out loud, because that would mean admitting that it was a real possibility.

"Or maybe what?"

"…Or maybe I made things worse. What if… what if I screwed something up, and Rip just doesn't want me to find out like that?"

"Nah," Mick dismissed that, "Rip loves telling us when we screw up, remember?"

"Then why else would he keep it a secret from me?! I knew, when I told my dad how he would die, that he could still die. He was in a warzone, for God's sake! People die in warzones! I already know that, and I can handle finding out that he survived the IED only to be killed by something else!"

"Can you? _Can_ you handle it?" Mick took another drink. "This is your dad we're talkin' about. I figure those of you with decent dads – or ones that could've been decent if they'd had the chance – would be a lot more invested in their survival."

"I know, I just… I've lived my whole life without him. I'm already used to it. I think I can handle knowing that my life is gonna be the same when I get back."

"But you've let yourself hope that it'll be better. Losing that could be like him dying all over again, which'd be worse now that you've actually met you him; you've got more to lose than just a name and a face and whatever stories you've been told."

Jax blinked at Mick, wondering when the hell the pyromaniac had actually gotten so… _wise_. Or maybe it was just a one-off thing. But either way, Mick was right. He'd been held in his father's arms for the first time in his life today. He'd gotten to talk with him and hear him say he was proud of him, but it wasn't enough. He wanted more of that. And he might not get it. He'd given himself a chance to have more time with his father, but that chance _was_ something to lose, something that could be ripped away from him.

Mick clapped him on the shoulder, startling him out of his thoughts, and began to walk back towards the barracks, his nearly-empty glass in one hand and the bottle in the other. "Well, whatever Rip's reasons are, you can ask him when he drags his ass out of bed. But you might wanna think about if you're ready for the answer or not."

Jax picked up his own glass and stared into it, picturing his father's face in his mind's eye. "Here's to you Dad," he whispered, "Whatever happens." And he took a slow drink.

* * *

 **I'm tweaking things with history a bit; in 'Last Refuge', Jax says his father was killed in Mogadishu, most likely meaning the Battle of Mogadishu on October 3-4, 1993, according to Wikipedia. However, Jax having been born in 1993 had to have been a mistake by the writers, since there's no way he could be born then and still be under 21 when Rip recruits them (or still be in high school when the Particle Accelerator blew in 2013), and Wikipedia also says that the UN pulled the foreign soldiers out of Somalia in March 1995, before Jax would have actually been born. So I'm just pretending – in this universe only – that they were still in Somalia. I also really don't know much about the Battle, so please forgive me if I get things wrong.**

 **The quote at the top was chosen because it's basically 'Time Wants to Happen' reworded. All quotes in this fic came from 'Criminal Minds'.**

 **I'm leaving James's fate unspecified because I don't know if it'll be revealed in a later episode or not.**


	9. Live On in Our Memories

**This chapter doesn't have a nightmare, really, and contains a bit more focus on post-brainwashing!Carter than I'd originally planned, but here it is. The last chapter of 'The Darkness that Keeps You Up at Night'.**

 **'Parallels' is still going pretty slowly, but after this I think I'm going to take a break from 'Legends' for a while and focus on other fandoms that I've been neglecting. I promise this isn't the last you'll hear from me, however!**

 **DISCLAIMER: I don't own Legends of Tomorrow.**

 **WORD COUNT: 1740**  
 **TOTAL: 15697**

* * *

"The strength of a family, like the strength of an army, is in its loyalty to each other." – Mario Puzo

* * *

 _It's all so dark. He can't even see his hand in front of his face._

 _"_ _Rip."_

 _Miranda's voice is as clear as a bell. He whips around, desperately searching for her._

 _"_ _Daddy."_

 _Jonas! Where are they?_

 _Finally, he spots them. They're standing only a few feet away from him, silhouetted in a door-sized rectangle of light that provides the only source of illumination in the dark space. He runs over to them, desperate to hold his wife and son again. But the distance between them seems to stretch out; no matter how much he runs, he can't get to them. But he can see their faces clearly. They're smiling sadly at him._

 _"_ _You know you can't come with us, Rip," Miranda tells him, "It's not your time."_

 _He wants to protest. He knows it's not his time to die; he's accepted that already. But he wants to hold them one last time._

 _"_ _It's okay, Daddy," Jonas says, "It's okay."_

 _He reaches out to his family, wanting to touch them one last time. To tell them how much he loved them._

 _"_ _Miranda," he gasped, "Jonas. Please, let me have just one more min-"_

* * *

 _Thursday, May 26_ _th_ _, 2016, 11:59pm_

 _DAY THIRTY ON THE WAVERIDER_

Rip woke up at the sudden noise that had disturbed him from his slumber. He looked around and realised, to his own embarrassment, that he'd fallen asleep at his desk – again. After sending his crew off for some well-deserved rest, he'd begun researching various time aberrations, things that would go unchecked thanks to the destruction of the Time Masters. There'd been an uptick sure enough, but most of them went away on their own, without his interference – evidence that there were still Time Captains out there who hadn't been at the Vanishing Point and therefore hadn't died during its destruction. It was a relief; he'd known virtually all the Captains out there, and each name removed from the list of possible casualties was a small lightening of the guilt that burdened him. Not to mention that it meant that he and his team weren't the only ones history would be relying on. The downside, however, was that it would be just a _tad_ difficult to convince the other Time Captains not to kill them for destroying the Vanishing Point.

But all that worrying could wait until they actually met another Time Captain. For now, Rip was going through the various aberrations and wondering which ones would be best to set his team on. It didn't help that he wasn't entirely certain which members would choose to stay at home in 2016 and which would decide to join him on his quest.

"Sorry."

Speaking of his team, Rip jumped at the sound of the voice coming from directly behind him, twisting around in his seat to see Carter Hall's apologetic face staring back up at him from where the other man was crouched in front of the hidden cabinet. Or not-so-hidden, as the door was wide open, and Carter was frozen mid-reach inside. Of course, Rip had been so caught up in his thoughts about the Time Masters that he'd even forgotten the noise that had woken him in the first place.

"Bloody Hell!" he gasped, "You very well gave me a bloody heart attack! What on Earth are you doing back there, anyway?!" Of course, it was fairly obvious that Mr. Hall was helping himself to Rip's not-so-secret-anymore liquor stash. By now, it had become commonplace to find his collection short another bottle practically every morning. Gideon freely admitted to knowing that Mr. Snart and Mr. Rory were frequently stealing his hard-obtained high-end liquor, but there wasn't much she could do about it. The lock on the door was one of the few things on the ship that she could not access – and was therefore one of the few things to which she could not deny someone else access.

"I-I was…" Carter stammered a bit, "I couldn't sleep. I was on my way to the Med Bay to get something to help when I bumped into Rory, and he said you had something back here. I don't think it occurred to him that I wasn't talking about alcohol."

Rip sighed. "Well, Mr. Rory has a habit of stealing a bottle practically every night, so his answer was rather predictable. And no one was actually supposed to know that this cache even exists, but then our resident lawbreakers must have gone snooping around and found it, because now they seem to treat it like _their_ own personal stash." He swallowed. "Or, I suppose it's just Mr. Rory, now."

Carter frowned. "Kendra said there was another member of your team, and I think I remember that, but…"

Rip looked at him carefully. "How much _do_ you remember?"

The reincarnated man shook his head, standing up and crossing the room to flop down on the couch. "Bits and pieces, mostly focused on Kendra and Savage. But there are others. When she said there was another person on the team, I had this… flash… of a man handing me the knife Savage used to kill us in Egypt. He was saying… 'Go get that son of a bitch'."

Rip nodded. "Yes, that was Leonard Snart. Without his sacrifice, we never would have been able to even _look_ for you and Kendra, let alone find you."

"And there was something else. I remember a man, a grown man, calling Kendra his mother, and I remember wondering how I could've forgotten him. My own child, even if he was one from a past life. I-I mean, I sort of remember Kendra – no, Sheila, her name was Sheila then, and then we had to change our names, and she became Edith – but I have this image of her holding this little boy, and I know he's mine, but his name… I could never remember his name." The guilt was obvious on his face. Rip remembered Kendra being so sad and confused at being unable to remember her son, recalled her breaking down in his arms after a dream that brought back her memories of how much she loved her child. Carter had claimed, early on, that he remembered the entirety of his past lives, but hadn't recognised Dr. Boardman's name when he should have. Rip supposed that Carter's memories hadn't been as complete as he'd thought, even without Savage's meddling.

"It may come back in time," Rip tried to assure him.

"How? This is something that happened before Savage got into my head. Aside from being the one who killed me all those times in between, he had nothing to do with me forgetting the name of my own son." He sighed. "At least you won't have to live with that."

Rip's breath hitched at the reminder of his own loss, but it didn't hurt as much as it would have mere days ago. Seeing Miranda and Jonas before he crashed the Waverider into the sun… it had given him the strength to move on. Rip had never been much of a religious person – the Time Masters would never have given their rescued orphans such an upbringing – but he just _knew_ , in his heart, that in whatever afterlife awaited him, Miranda and Jonas would be there to welcome him with open arms. And while he still no longer needed to obsessively watch and re-watch his one recording of them, he knew that with it, he no longer held any fear of forgetting their faces, or the sound of their voices.

"Perhaps," he suggested, "But that doesn't mean you should give up hope of ever remembering. Forgive me if I'm wrong, but perhaps you just didn't have anything to remind you of him. I remember you saying, early on in our journey, that you remembered falling in love with Kendra and dying at Savage's hands two hundred and six times before, but maybe your memories were otherwise incomplete because they were the only two commonalities in each life. The only thing that was constant. Perhaps all you need is something else to trigger the rest of your memories. I'm sure if you remember enough of your names in each life, Gideon can do some research and help you fill in the blanks."

Carter stared at him, openly astonished. "You would do that?"

Rip pulled out his pocket watch and opened it, revealing the smiling faces of the two people he loved the most. "The ones we love may no longer be with us, but they deserve to be remembered."

"Hear, hear." Both men turned to see Martin standing in the office entrance, a sad, yet warm smile on his face. Behind his stood the rest of the crew, even Mick.

"We couldn't sleep," Sara offered as an explanation, "Still too keyed up from the battle, I guess."

"I only wanted another drink," Mick added, "They just followed me here."

Rip smiled. "Perhaps we could all use one."

He got up off his chair and knelt by the liquor cache, pulling out the bottle of scotch he and Mr. Rory had shared earlier. Jax and Kendra ducked out of the room and came back a few minutes later with eight glasses from the galley. Rip filled them all up and everyone took one – Stein didn't even protest when Jax took a glass.

Rip held up his. "To those we have lost. They may not be with us now, but a part of them will always live on in our memories. And we shall honour them by moving forward, together. Cheers."

"Cheers," they all echoed and drank.

They drank to Miranda Coburn-Hunter.

They drank to Jonas Hunter.

They drank to Leonard Snart.

They drank to Laurel Lance.

They drank to Ronald Raymond.

They drank to Aldus Boardman.

They drank to Anna Loring.

They drank to James Jackson.

They drank to all those they'd loved and lost, choosing to remember and move forward.

THE END

* * *

 **I kind of wondered why Carter implied that he remembered everything from his past lives, but didn't know about Aldus until Aldus himself told him; he should have recognised the name as soon as he heard it. My theory is that he remembers Kendra and Savage the most because they've been present in every single one of his past lives, but the rest needs something else to trigger the memories, and sadly, Aldus's name was one of them.**

 **And here's a little preview of 'Parallels', just to give you something to look forward to:**

 _ **"Let me guess," Len pre-empted him once they were away from the crowd, "If I hurt Sara, you'll kill me? Hate to break it to you, Queen, but if I ever hurt her, she has first claim on kicking my ass, and her parents are next in line, assuming there's anything left of me once she's finished." That seemed to leave Queen temporarily speechless, something Len took no small pleasure in. "Besides, I thought we were talking about your ex-girlfriend, not your baby sister."**_

 _ **Queen glared at him. "What's that supposed to mean?"**_

 _ **"That this speech is usually something said by the father or the older brother or sister, close friends if the above aren't available. And while you certainly fall into the latter category, Sara has a cop father who is available. Trust me, I've given these same threats myself."**_

 _ **"Really? You threaten the guys your supervillain sister dates?"**_

 _ **"Your baby sister used to be a vigilante just like you, the daughter and ex-pupil of the former Ra's al Ghul, and you would still do anything to protect her. I would do no less for mine. Though I loathe to admit it, Queen, we have that much in common."**_

 _ **And it did piss him off, having anything in common with one of the heroes that he hadn't recently been fighting alongside.**_


End file.
